Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

Should you wish to add a word or send a message?

Babbington is making our excuses.’

‘Let Babbington bear mine by word of mouth, if you please. I am so glad you are not going ashore. It would have been the extreme of folly, with the Polychrest known to be on the station.’

Babbington came in, shining with cleanliness, in a frilled shirt and fine white breeches.

‘You remember Mrs Villiers?’ said Jack.

‘Oh yes, sir. Besides, I drove her to the ball.’

‘She is in Dover, at the house where you called for her - New Place. Be so good as to give her this note; and I believe Dr Maturin has a message.’

‘Compliments: regrets,’ said Stephen.

‘Now turn out your pockets,’ said Jack.

Babbington’s face fell. A little heap of objects appeared, some partially eaten, and a surprising number of coins -silver, a gold piece. Jack returned fourpence, observing that that would set him up handsomely in cheesecakes, recommended him to bring back all his men as he should answer the contrary at his peril, and desired him to ‘top his boom’.

‘It is the only way of keeping him even passably chaste,’ he said to Stephen. ‘There are a great many loose women in Dover, I am afraid.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Mr Parker, ‘but a man by the name of Killick asks permission to come aboard.’

‘Certainly, Mr Parker,’ cried Jack. ‘He is my steward. There you are, Killick,’ he said, coming on deck. ‘I am happy to see you. What have you got there?’

‘Hampers, sir,’ said Killick, pleased to see his captain, but unable to restrain a wondering eye from running up and down the Polychrest. ‘One from Admiral Haddock. T’other from the ladies up at Mapes, or rather, from Miss Sophie, to speak correct: pig, cheeses, butter, cream, poultry and such, from Mapes; game from next door. Admiral’s clearing off his land, sir. There’s a prime bold roebuck there, sir, hung this sennight past, and any number of hares and such.’

‘Mr Malloch, a whip - no, a double whip to the main-​yard. Easy with those hampers, now. What’s the third bundle?’

‘Another roebuck, sir.’

‘Where from?’

‘Which it fouled the wheels of the tax-​cart I come in and hurt its leg, sir,’ said Killick, looking at the flagship in the distance with a kind of mild wonder. ‘Just half a mile after the turning to Provender bridge. No, I lie - maybe a furlong closer to Newton Priors. So I put it out of its misery, sir.’

‘Ah,’ said Jack. ‘The Mapes hamper is directed to Dr Maturin, I see.’

‘It’s all one, sir,’ said Killick. ‘Miss told me to say the pig weighs twenty-​seven and a half pound the quarter, and I am to set the hams to the tub the very minute I come aboard - the souse she put aside in thicky jar, knowing you liked ‘un. The white puddings is for the Doctor’s breakfast.’

‘Very good, Killick, very good indeed,’ said Jack. ‘Stow ‘em away. Handsomely with that buck - don’t you bruise him on any account.’

‘To think a man’s heart could break over a soused hog’s face,’ he reflected, feigning to turn over the admiral’s game; partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, mallard, wigeon, teal, hares. ‘You brought the rest of the wine Killick?’

‘Which the bottles broke, sir: all but half a dozen of the Burgundy.’

Jack cocked his eye, sighed, but said nothing. Six bottles would do pretty well, with what was left of his corruption from the yard. ‘Mr Parker, Mr Macdonald, I hope you will give me the pleasure of dining in the cabin tomorrow? I am expecting a guest.’

They bowed, smiled, and said they should be very happy; they did indeed feel a real pleasure, for Jack had declined the gunroom’s last invitation, and this had created an uneasiness in their minds - an unpleasant beginning to a commission.

Stephen said the same in effect, when he could be brought to understand. ‘Yes, yes, certainly, of course -much obliged. I did not grasp your meaning.’

‘Yet it was plain enough, in all conscience,’ said Jack, ‘and adapted to the meanest understanding. I said. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow? Canning is coming, and I have asked Parker, Macdonald and Pullings.”‘

‘My mind dwells with real concern, and yet with what I might term an inquisitive, slightly vulgar concern, upon the state of Mother Williams’s heart when she finds her dairy, poultry-​yard, pig-​house, larder, stripped bare. Will it burst? Will it stop beating altogether? Dry to a total desiccation - no great step? What the effect upon her visceral humours? How will Sophie reply? Will she attempt concealment, prevarication? She lies with as much skill as Preserved Killick - a desperate stare, and her face the most perfect damask rose. My mind, I say, wanders in this region, lost. I have no acquaintance with English family life, with English female family life: it is to me a region quite unknown.’

It was not a region in which Jack chose to dwell: with a start of intense pain he jerked his mind away. ‘Lord, I love that Sophie so,’ he cried within. He took a quick turn on deck, going right forward to pat the gammoning of the bowsprit - a private consolation from his very earliest days at sea When he came back he said, ‘A most damnable unpleasant thought has just struck me. I know I must not give Canning swine’s flesh, he being a Jew; but can he eat a buck? Is a buck unclean? And hare would not answer, either, for I dare say they are rated with the coney and her kind.’

‘I have no idea. You have no Bible, I suppose?’

‘Indeed I have a Bible. I used it to check Heneage’s signal - The Lord taketh no pleasure in the strength of an horse, do you remember? What did he mean by that, do you suppose? It was not so very witty, or original; for after all, everyone knows the Lord taketh no pleasure in the strength of an horse. He had crossed his tiller-​ropes, I dare say. However, I have also been reading it, these last few days.’

‘Ah?’

‘Yes. I may preach a sermon to the ship’s company next Sunday.’

‘You? Preach a sermon?’

‘Certainly. Captains often do, when no chaplain is carried. I always made do with the Articles of War in the Sophie, but now I think I shall give them a clear, well-​reasoned - come, what’s the matter? What is so very entertaining about my preaching a sermon? Damn your eyes, Stephen.’ Stephen was doubled in his chair, rocking to and fro, uttering harsh spasmodic squeaks: tears ran down his face. ‘What a spectacle you are, to be sure. Now I come to think of it, I do not believe I have ever heard you laugh before. It is a damned illiberal row, I can tell you - it don’t suit you at all. Squeak, squeak. Very well: you shall laugh your bellyful.’ He turned away with something about ‘pragmatical apes - simpering, tittering’ and affected to look into the Bible without the least concern; but there are not many who can find themselves the object of open, whole-​hearted, sincere, prostrating laughter without being put out of countenance, and Jack was not one of these few. However, Stephen’s mirth died away in time - a few last crowing whoops and it was over. He got to his feet, and dabbing his face with a handkerchief he took Jack by the hand. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon. I would not have vexed you for the world. But there is something so essentially ludicrous, so fundamentally comic. . . that is to say, I had so droll an association of ideas - pray do not take it personally at all. Of course you shall preach to the men; I am persuaded it will have a most striking effect.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, with a suspicious glance, ‘I am glad it afforded you so much innocent merriment at all events. Though what you find.

‘What is your text, pray?’